Actors - Eric Portman

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	Actors - Eric Portman

Eric Portman (born Halifax, West Yorkshire on 13 July, 1903 and died St. Veep, Cornwall on 7 December, 1969) was a distinguished British stage and film actor.

Background

He is probably best remembered for his roles in several films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger during the 1940s. He was in the top ten of Britain's biggest box office draws in 1942.

He started work in 1922 as a salesman in the menswear department at Marshall and Snedgrove's in Leeds and acted in the amateur Halifax Light Opera Society . He made his professional stage debut in 1924, before he was engaged by Lilian Baylis for the Old Vic Company. In 1928 he starred as Romeo in the rebuilt Old Vic and he forged a reputation as a noted Shakespearian actor.

He was a lifelong bachelor, who died at the age of 66 at his home in rural Cornwall.

Cinema

He was a familiar British actor in many films of the Second World War period:

A Nazi U-Boat commander in Forty-Ninth Parallel
(1941)
A heroic RAF officer stranded in the Netherlands in One of Our Aircraft is Missing
(1942)
The Magistrate in A Canterbury Tale
(1944).
He also starred in Squadron Leader X (1941),
Anthony Asquith
's We Dive at Dawn (1943),
Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder's Millions Like Us (1943),
The Colditz Story
(1955)
The Whisperers
(1967)
Portman's final film was Deadfall (1967), directed by Bryan Forbes
.

Television

He also played Number Two in The Prisoner, episode; Free for All, screened on 22 October, 1967.

Honours

He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor (Dramatic) for his Broadway performance as the bogus Major, in Terence Rattigan's play Separate Tables in 1957.

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